In April, American Greetings formally agreed to an $878 million buyout by its top executives, who are members of the Weiss family that controls the company.

“When the company first learned of the Weiss family's interest, its directors did what they were supposed to: They formed a special committee of independent directors to weigh the offer and negotiate on behalf of all shareholders to get the fairest deal,” the blog post says. “The Weiss family bumped the price three times before American Greetings' independent directors agreed to a deal.”

The Weiss family owns only about 10% of the company's equity, according to the post.

“But because there are two classes of stock, with each B share representing 10 times the vote of an A share, the Weiss family has roughly 51% voting control,” Moneybeat says.

Companies with dual-class share structures are in the minority in the United States, “but they are overwhelmingly family or founder-controlled, according to deal lawyers,” according to the post.

The post says advisers to American Greetings' special committee “also recommended that the deal require approval from a majority of shareholders not affiliated with the Weiss family. A person familiar with the process said directors were extremely heedful of the appearance of any conflict, and drove a hard bargain.”

But those efforts “weren't enough for at least one shareholder,” the post notes, as TowerView LLC, an investment fund run by Daniel Tisch of the billionaire Tisch family, said it would vote against the deal. TowerView owns 6.1% of the common shares.

The post concludes this way:

TowerView is in for a challenge, but the fund may have other shareholders on its side. American Greetings shares closed Monday at $18.46 apiece, 26 cents higher than the Weiss family's $18.20-per-share offer. That indicates shareholders maybe expecting more. And since the closing of the deal depends on securing approval from a majority of shares not held by the family or affiliates, this cake is still baking.

This and that

The company today launched a marketing partnership with Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment related to the pending release of “Despicable Me 2.”

Progressive said its integrated campaign “will include a microsite that features an exclusive scene from the new film, a co-branded online game and an 'Evil Laugh' contest.” Consumers also will see the “Minions” — the best-known “Despicable Me” characters — in a new Progressive commercial and in custom print and digital advertisements.

“This partnership works for us from a business and branding perspective,” said Jeff Charney, chief marketing officer at Progressive, in a statement. “Flo and the Minions are such a natural fit, both bringing a fun and refreshing sense of humor together.”

To view Progressive's new commercial featuring the Minions, play Progressive's “Despicable Me 2” game and check out a variety of additional “Despicable Me 2” content, go here.

Buy the way: Bloomberg profiles junior trader-turned-author Turney Duff, a Cleveland native who has written a buzzed-about new memoir called “The Buy Side.”

Mr. Duff's 308-page account of the highs and lows of life on Wall Street “provides a timely window into practices that have been a focus of federal prosecutors,” Bloomberg says. “His spectacular fall is also perplexing, as he initially comes off as smart, albeit green.”

On his website, Mr. Duff notes that he was born in Cleveland in 1969 , “which explains the tattoo of Chief Wahoo, the Indian's mascot, on my ankle.”

He graduated from Ohio University with a degree in journalism but pursued finance after failing to land an interview at newspapers or magazines.

This piece in Buzzfeed is not impressed with the book, calling it “every Wall Street and every addiction memoir in one.”

Among its clichés: The author stumbles into a career in finance, encounters a scary colleague who throws stuff, determined that “screwing clients is appalling,” is obsessed by bonuses, travels to Las Vegas and then turns to writing about it.

“OB-GYNs say they are increasingly making it as routine as asking about contraception during annual visits,” The Journal says. “They are educating patients about fertility rates, which gradually begin to decline around age 32 and then rapidly decline after age 37. And they are discussing the risks of miscarriage and chromosomal abnormalities, which increase at age 35 and above.”

Doctors say advances in fertility treatments and media coverage of women conceiving in their 40s and even 50s “have led some people to believe they can beat the biological clock,” according to the story.

But most people can't.

"I hear many people say 40 is the new 30. But not reproductively, it's not the new 30," Dr. Austin tells the newspaper. "Our ovaries are aging at the same rate they did 50 years ago."

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